13 mth old: milk or formula? Bottle or cup?

B

baffelly

Registered User
Two questions for my 13 mth old:

milk or formula? He's been on Enfamil Stage 2 (for 6mth -1yr) and I bought a can of Stage 3 (for 1-3yr) but found it very sweet. So I'm staying with Stage 2 for now. What do other moms do? He is not a very good eater so I thought formula can provide more nutrients than milk. I am using cow milk to cook for him though.

bottle or cup? How/when do you wean your babies off bottles? Even with the biggest hold nipple it seems very slow for him to drink from the bottle. And I think he should learn to be a big boy and stop using the bottle soon. He's drinking water from straw-cup but only a few sips at a time, not sure if he can drink a whole cup of milk from it.

Please share your experience!
 
Good topic, I`m also interested to hear about what other mothers do.
I`m feeding my 13 month old about 90% stage 2 formula and 10% whole milk (organic milk powder). He drinks the formula in a bottle and the milk in a sippy cup, but one of those old fashioned (no name) types where the spout is hard, has 3 holes and the liquid pretty much just pours out. I actually started him on a sippy cup(Avent) and real cup at 6 months, but because he was solely breastfed at that time and that`s the only way he could take other liquids. He actually learned to drink from a bottle because of his sippy cup
He drinks water and juice through a straw cup and if he`s thirsty he drinks pretty well, but by no means the same as formula from a bottle, so I`m a bit apprehensive about that.
He has been a good eater in the past, but with his newfound `toddlerdom`, there are many meals that are less than great, much less than before, for sure. I was told by the MCHC nurse to take away one of his 3 milk feedings. Honestly, I totally disregarded her - maybe because I`m western and our culture is really into having the baby and children drink milk... Anyway, I have started reducing a bit of the amount, as I saw sometimes that he wanted less. I have been trying to make up for this by adding it to his meals somehow or through the small cup of milk he drinks each day.
If you want your son to start with a cup, just introduce it to him. He`ll get the hang of it....very eventually, but it`s a very nice back up.
I know all the (western) books say to start weaning from the bottle at 12 months, but personally I think that`s a bit premature. I actually enjoy giving my son his bottles, and I can`t see him drinking all of that in a cup. Maybe when he`s older. I`m also still gettting the hang of of this:)
 
I started cow milk when my son was 12-13 months, by mixing it little to little to his formula. After 2 weeks he was drinking only milk.
I'm still giving him his milk in a bottle (he is 27 months), depending on what time he wakes up in the morning he will have a small one in the morning, then one in the afternoon with a snack and a last one just before to go to bed. I've started to reduce the quantity as we will start potting training soon and don't want him to be full of liquids late at night.
Besides, I started to give him a glass first, before the sippy cup, and depending on the time/meal/occasion, he will have either the glass or the cup. At meal time it's a glass, when we go out it's the cup...
I'm waiting a bit longer to stop the bottle, but as long as he is happy to have it, I see no reason to wean him.
 
my first question to you is why make it more difficult?

eventually, your kids are going to have to learn how to drink from a cup, right? so why add another stage in there (if you are breastfeeding)?

at what stage would YOU feel comfortable having your baby drink through a cup? or through a bottle? (i used to teach a 5 year old that still drank formula from a bottle!)

if you would rather have your child be more self-sufficient earlier, then i would suggest a cup with a lid of some sort. for us, it worked out really well. during the day, at home, my kids still use their "juice bottles" or "juice cups". when i say bottle, i mean the kind that has a spout(like an adult's water bottle for hiking). however, at meal times, we only use proper cups. this way, my kids have been fairly proficient at drinking from proper cups when out at a restaurant from a fairly young age.

but really, it all comes down to you and what you want to do.

as for milk vs. formula. i kept both of my kids on formula until the age of 2. i simply did it because fresh milk is so expensive. (to be honest, my daughter had formula until she was almost 2.5.) for both of them, i handled the weaning off of it in exactly the same way:

when i got to the end of a tin, i made a big deal about it. then when it was time for bed (my daughter LOVED her bedtime milk!) i simply said, "uh oh! we ran out! we'll have to buy some tomorrow!" then repeated for the next 3 nights. the first night, she cried for about 45 minutes. the second for about 20 and the third about 5. by the fourth, she'd forgotten all about it. by that point, i removed the bottles (how she drank milk, but nothing else) from view and left it.

she's been fine ever since.

IF however, i was solely breastfeeding at one year of age, i would skip bottles & formula completely and go straight to cow's milk.
 
My son is 14 1/2 months and we stopped using bottles at 1 year. I started giving him milk in a sippy cup, just a plastic cup with a lid and 3 holes, at around 10 months for 1 feed a day. I started it off with the morning feed and eventually by 12 months he was doing all 3 milk feeds out of the sippy cup. He drinks water through a straw cup.

I weaned him off formula by mixing 50/50 with cows milk, oat milk or soy milk. He gets a different milk each week, mainly because I don't drink cows milk but I just buy it occasionally for him.

The older he gets the more fussy he gets with his food, so I give him a childs multi-vitamin crushed up and mixed in with yoghurt for his dessert.
 
shenzhennifer, can i ask which organic milk powder do u use? am planning to wean my 1 yr old soon from formula...
 
i weaned my daugher at 1 from formula too...she didn't develop allergies from cow's milk, so now (at 18mths) she is fully on that - i buy different brands because of the issue with hormones etc....she uses the cup to drink at meals now, but she did use the bottle when she was sick because she was being fussy with her food and I wanted to make sure she drank enough milk (she doesn't drink quite as much with a cup)
 
why don't you just give cow's milk as eventually that is what they'll need to drink unless there is a concern for allergy. We switched right to cow's milk at 13 months to see if he would take it. He did, so there was no need to mix it with his old formula. it's so much easier when you travel - no need to bring the heavy tins etc...we just use the small UHT milk containers from Paul's.

Right when he turned 2, we bagged all his bottles up and hid them up high and just gave him the option of his cups and straws (he never liked those sippy cups). He found one he liked (we had about 4 choices) and that's what we use now.

I find that when you guide their choices, it makes things so much easier.
 
I am breastfeeding my 9 month baby and i want to start weaning her because i'm going to work soon. My doctor suggested giving her cow's milk at 9 months, he said i don't need to wait till 1 yrs if i don't have history of allergies to milk. So you don't really need to keep him on formula, and i'm sure he's getting alot of the nutrients from other food he is eating.

I think you should start training him on zippy cup or cup...they just need to keep practicing..eventually he will know how to drink from it..
 
I introduced cow's milk when my son was 1yr old. I have forgotten exactly how i did it, but i think i gave him a little milk in the beginning to see how he would tolerate it and then i slowly supplemented his formula with cow's milk. He pretty much weaned himself off the bottle. He used to get 200mls in the mornings but wouldn't drink it anymore, so we left it. From a milk lover he developed into an anti-milk drinker :( Only milk products he likes is either cheese or milk ice-cream.

I introduced zippy cups at around 1yr but never found them very good, so i switched to drinking from a regular cup. They adapt to cups so quickly and of course there are going to be lots of spills but by the time the eat proper food with hands it gets even messier :)
 
we love the doidy cups! they are a bit slanted so the child can see the liquid coming towards him. we gave it to our son at 1 years old. Every day, we just plopped him in a highchair for 10 minutes, covered him with a towel/raincoat and let him just have fun trying to figure out how the cup worked and how fast the water would come out when he tried to drink it. it's wet, it's messy, but it's the only way they learn. they sell the cups at bumps to babes.

Doidy, Doidy Cup, Doidy weaning cup, Bickiepegs, slanted drinking cup, weening cup, cup with handles, sloping cup, cup a
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top